Fast-Forward…

With PCS season upon us once more, everything around me feels like it’s speeding up. Days are flying by faster by the week – how is it already April?

My family has orders to move back stateside this summer after 2 years OCONUS, and mostly, I feel like I don’t know what to feel. 

I ‘knew’ that this phase would happen, but in the abstract way that one assumes something about a thing that hasn’t been experienced yet.

Each time we PCS, the looming departure phase is different – but this one is proving to be both hopeful and stressful – brimming with nostalgia and somehow dragging its feet at the same. 

How is such a thing possible?

The fast-forward button has been pressed, and I can feel the pressure of it, like a notification that I can’t silence.

Family bucket lists have been made – things we want to do or see before we leave the island, repeats that we want to experience again, and stuff that we’d like to get to, “if we have time.”

Time is the one thing no one is guaranteed, and yet, I’ve come to count on it’s continued indulgence.

Many of the optimistically scrawled tasks on today’s ‘to-do’ list find themselves pushed towards tomorrow. Phone calls, e-mails, things I ought to check on, one after another, I let them wait until tomorrow, because it always comes. 

But soon, our days in this house, and on this island, will be over. And then, the concept of tomorrow will no longer hold power over any part of our time here on Guam. 

We’re about 2 months out from our upcoming PCS, and little puzzle pieces are falling into place, even as others scatter with complications, or are chucked out all-together. In this season, nobody claims that the picture you end up with will be the same as the one you had at the start. 

My pre-packing purges are mostly complete, and the pile of donations in the garage will make its way out of the house any day now (never mind that I’ve been making that claim for weeks). 

Tasks range from finalizing medical appointments and obtaining records, to making lists (so many lists!), mentally prepping my kids for the big changes, and trying to be creative with the food left in our deep freezer. 

Most of that song and dance is old, familiar, and not particularly stressful.

In the moment, sure, I feel accomplished by checking tasks off the ever-growing lists. But there are emotional stressors that feel much more difficult to pin down in these last remaining weeks. 

The internal monologue rarely pauses.

Did I appreciate the beauty of the island enough?

Have I admired that crystal blue water today?

Have I paid attention to the way the palms rustle in the wind?

Did I encourage my kids to come watch the fish, find the crabs, admire the shells? To look for the good, to help where they can, to leave a place better?

We are lucky to have amazing friends here – people who help us through the daily struggles of life with kids in a place far from home. Have I told them how much I appreciate them?

Have I soaked in enough of their grace, and the tiny bits of wisdom they drop in casual conversation that sometimes blow me away?

Have I managed to lock in the memory of what it feels like, to sit or stand or walk alongside a friend as comfortable and REAL as the sun on my face?

Every day, the answer is no.

The answer will always be no, when you’re about to leave a place that has shaped you into something a bit different than you were before. 

This close to the end of a bright, sunlit season, there simply will never be enough time. 

Guam has been the first place where I can claim that my husband was home more than he was away.

It was the place where he really got to know our kids: each of their little phases, quirks, and mood swings. He participated in the daily routine, he became counted on as a constant, rather than an occasional happy addition. 

I will miss that, perhaps more than all the beauty of the island combined. It will be hard to leave the place that made our family feel so whole. 

But the fast-forward button has been pressed.

All I can do is to make the best of the time that remains, and to trust that what lies ahead will be just as beautiful, in it’s own way.

There are many things we’ve missed about living stateside, especially our families, whom we haven’t seen in 2 years. 

But sometimes, after so many years in this military family life, I wish that I didn’t always have to press myself to look ahead – to the next change, the next challenge, the next phase. 

Sometimes, I just wish I could hit the pause button.

*To read more from Kaci, check out her MM Author Page.